German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that Hitler came to power 80 years ago was “a permanent warning” for the Germans, pointing out that democracy and freedom will not be taken for granted.
“This must be a permanent warning for us Germans,” insisted Merkel while Germany commemorates the arrival of the Nazi dictator at the Chancellery on January 30, 1933. “Human rights do not impose themselves. Freedom does not come naturally and democracy fails self,” she said, inaugurating an exhibition in Berlin the first six months of the “Führer” in power. “Anything that makes a living human society requires men who show respect and care towards each other, who take responsibility for themselves and others,” insisted the leader born after the Second World War, reaffirming “ongoing responsibility” of Germany for Nazi crimes.
Hitler speaking at the site of the former headquarters of the Gestapo (Nazi secret police), recalled that it had taken six months to Adolf Hitler “to destroy the diversity” of the German society. She also pointed out that a large part of German society had supported “or at least condoned” the Hitler regime. Angela Merkel, for example, recalled that “students and teachers” were involved in a huge bonfire, May 10, 1933 in Berlin, initiated by the Nazis against the Jewish writers, communists and pacifists or in which the works of the greatest intellectuals German language as “Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Kurt Tucholsky” were burned.

